Finding Peace through Prayer

As I sit here in the Cougareat enjoying my Raisin bran and orange juice, Billy Joel's thoughts coming from the radio seem to temporarily transcend my own. “Honesty is hardly ever heard, but mostly what I need from you,” sings Billy. These thoughts come as I tr to write this paper on communicating, on being straightforward. Somehow, Billy Joel's attitude and my own seem to be the same.

Communication is a God-given gift but like every other gift from God, it can be abused. The scriptures on several occasions caution us to use this gift wisely. Paul warns us in Ephesians to “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of (our) mouth(s), but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers” (Ephesians 4:29).

As I think of the pure in-heart person and how he looks at communicating with others, I see that the real key to communicating with others is to have honest and true communication with God. President N. Eldon Tanner in the book “Prayer” (Deseret Book Co., 1977) gives a brief but powerful statement. “…this experience called prayer is the most important and vital of all communication.” He further shared”

“There is no doubt that we are better people when we try to tune into the Spirit of our Father in Heaven that we might communicate with Him and express our desire to do His will as we pray for His blessings.”

This communication called prayer is the means for communicating with all things. When we are at one with the Spirit and find another person who also is, there is a bonding, a feeling of oneness between these two people.

We may lie to ourselves or even to others, but we can't lie to God. There's no way around that. A classic example found in Mark Twain's “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn finds Huck saying:

“It made me shiver. And I about madeup my mind to pray and see if I couldn't try quit being the boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It weren’t no use to try and hide it from im. … I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn’t right; It was because I weren’t square; It was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing. But deep down in me, I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie … I found that out.”

The real key to truly understanding ourselves and others is to understand God and the way He works and then apply those same things to our dealings with others. In so doing, we can't help but be straightforward with the people we interact with. Is God anything but straightforward with us?

President Spencer W Kimball has stated that “sin comes when communication lines are down - it always does, sooner or later.” (General conference report, April 1972: 29.) To avoid sin and thus be able to communicate straightforwardly, we must keep close tabs with the Lord. There is no other way.

As Billy Joel sings on about honesty and the need for such in relationships, I agree. Unless we are honest when we communicate with God, with ourselves, and with others, we will constantly be in turmoil, in self-betrayal. And how can you truly be happy if you have eclipsed yourself from the truth? That's the whole idea of this paper. You can't be.